The farm, backed by the Cayman Islands government, houses about 7,000 turtles in small pools. The meat is used to supply restaurants for turtle dishes including stews, steaks and soup.

Animal welfare campaigners say the pools are so crowded that keeping the animals in them amounts to wilful neglect and cruelty. They have called on the British government, which oversees the Caymans as an overseas territory, to bring pressure to halt the “abuse”.

“Turtles are solitary animals that seldom interact with each other except in the breeding season,” said Rebecca Moore of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, which has released a film of the farm. “At the Cayman Turtle Farm, we found stressed, diseased sea turtles stacked on